Mars and Labor

It's the first day of Spring. The Sun, Mercury, and Venus are all transiting the first decan of Aries. In my mind, ideas about imperialism, hubris, work, labor, love, all swirl together. Let's parse them out.

The sign of Aries is ruled by Mars, and so too is the first decan of Aries. Thus, we are met with pure Martian energy here. This energy is about starting anew, bursting forth into life. There is a kind of violence inherent in beginnings – think of the blade of grass breaking through the surface of the soil, a baby rearranging the body of its bother to come forth screaming and bloody into the world, an egg cracking open. Think of the trees that need to be cut down to build a new home; the forest that is razed to start a new garden; the towns and people that are met with violence in the name of conquest. The Two of Wands – the tarot card associated with this decan – depicts a man holding the a small world in his hand. To me, this is the image of imperialism – the world belongs to me, and I stand above it, I can hold it at a distance from myself rather than acknowledging that I too am inside of it, that it does its slow work on me just as much s it does on those I seek to subjugate.

There is violence in starting anew but there can also be love. To believe in the future at all, to be willing to start new – that is an act of bravery, an act of love for those who come after you. To love someone for a long time also requires many new starts, ways of being with them that are different and new. And this all requires effort and energy – not the slow, sustained effort that builds towards something, but the circular kind of effort, the kind that comes in bursts. This is why I think of labor when I think of Mars – the energy, the repeated effort. Mars rejoices in the 6th house, the place that rules the routines of our life, the actions that sustain our bodies and our homes and communities. Mars is the effort we are tasked with putting into these routines and actions. But so often this effort is erased from our vision; it is undervalued, made invisible by the fact that it does not produce, it only sustains. Because there is no product as a result of this effort, we don’t count it as valuable work. I think of the women who labor in childbirth, who care for their homes, who make the repeated efforts to ensure that they and those around them are sustained – but whom we don’t see as “working.” I think of the people whose job it is to perform these kinds of tasks for others with more money, who are paid less, valued less, seen as “unskilled.” I think of how all the routines and the maintenance of our very being is made an afterthought because it is not factored into the concept of a 40-hour work week.

And why? Partly because of imperialism. Because of the desire for more and more, the impulse to conquest, the belief some have that the world belongs to them. It is these imperial forces that shape our daily lives, that point our vision towards the ways that we produce and consume out in the world and away from the dignified effort that goes into simply sustaining life. It is then a bold act of courage – yes, also ruled by this double-Mars decan – to turn back towards the exertion cycle of tending to ourselves, our bodies, and others, to see it as a venerated practice, to carve out, as Mars would, with a sharp knife, a space for our rituals and routines, to protect the sacred work of life with a warrior spirit, to guard the sovereignty we have over ourselves in whatever ways we can.